I’m the author of the “mygod, he has written a python interpreter using regex…” (i.e. pyminifier) mentioned at that link below =).
I just wanted to chime in and say that I’ve improved the code quite a bit using the tokenizer module (which I discovered thanks to this question =) ).
You’ll be happy to note that the code no longer relies so much on regular expressions and uses tokenizer to great effect. Anyway, here’s the remove_comments_and_docstrings()
function from pyminifier
(Note: It works properly with the edge cases that previously-posted code breaks on):
import cStringIO, tokenize
def remove_comments_and_docstrings(source):
"""
Returns 'source' minus comments and docstrings.
"""
io_obj = cStringIO.StringIO(source)
out = ""
prev_toktype = tokenize.INDENT
last_lineno = -1
last_col = 0
for tok in tokenize.generate_tokens(io_obj.readline):
token_type = tok[0]
token_string = tok[1]
start_line, start_col = tok[2]
end_line, end_col = tok[3]
ltext = tok[4]
# The following two conditionals preserve indentation.
# This is necessary because we're not using tokenize.untokenize()
# (because it spits out code with copious amounts of oddly-placed
# whitespace).
if start_line > last_lineno:
last_col = 0
if start_col > last_col:
out += (" " * (start_col - last_col))
# Remove comments:
if token_type == tokenize.COMMENT:
pass
# This series of conditionals removes docstrings:
elif token_type == tokenize.STRING:
if prev_toktype != tokenize.INDENT:
# This is likely a docstring; double-check we're not inside an operator:
if prev_toktype != tokenize.NEWLINE:
# Note regarding NEWLINE vs NL: The tokenize module
# differentiates between newlines that start a new statement
# and newlines inside of operators such as parens, brackes,
# and curly braces. Newlines inside of operators are
# NEWLINE and newlines that start new code are NL.
# Catch whole-module docstrings:
if start_col > 0:
# Unlabelled indentation means we're inside an operator
out += token_string
# Note regarding the INDENT token: The tokenize module does
# not label indentation inside of an operator (parens,
# brackets, and curly braces) as actual indentation.
# For example:
# def foo():
# "The spaces before this docstring are tokenize.INDENT"
# test = [
# "The spaces before this string do not get a token"
# ]
else:
out += token_string
prev_toktype = token_type
last_col = end_col
last_lineno = end_line
return out